


Rainbow Road

by iopeneditbeforechristmas



Series: brand new day [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fluff, M/M, post-upd8, therapy through fic because how the hell else would i suffer, upd8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 02:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6546355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iopeneditbeforechristmas/pseuds/iopeneditbeforechristmas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hardest thing to get used to is all the <i>space.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Rainbow Road

**Author's Note:**

> it should be established and also apparent considering he's the protag of all my WIPs that my favourite character in the whole of everything is dave

The hardest thing to get use to is the space.

The meteor was big and echoing and endless, but it was also a twisted warren of walls and corners and air vents, a reality-defying masterpiece that comprised rooms which quite literally should not have been able to exist. This new Earth is like Earth before shit had a chance to go wrong, and it’s clean and bright, the air so much fresher than anything Dave’s ever breathed in his life. Jade’s been talking about sustainable living, and there are trolls somewhere figuring out how best to start building – because trolls are given the materials to build their houses when they’re like two and so they know all about architecture, shit is wild on Alternia (this is just another Lesson on Alternian Culture Dave spent like fifteen whole minutes being shocked about back on the meteor, before Karkat told him in no uncertain terms that he was being a giant fucking dick about the whole thing). Dave feels like he should probably help out somewhere. Maybe he and Karkat and Rose and Kanaya could figure out a way to properly integrate the most important aspects of troll and human culture, given how they’ve all already gone through the whole interspecies cultural shock.

He’ll do that later, though. Right now, he’s lying with his head on Karkat’s lap, swearing as Jade kicks his ass at Mario Kart for the seventeenth time this morning and trying to get used to all the _space._

Time is, obviously, something that’s been pouring into him since John first touched their Ultimate Reward, but that’s different. That’s something that’s only Dave’s – and whoever the trolls’ time player was, he guesses, but they haven’t shown up yet – something integral to who he is. There isn’t a goddamn soul on this planet who’s getting used to having all the time in this new world poured through his veins like fire, roaring through his ears and his brain and tingling at his finger-tips. This new time is Dave’s alone, something to get used to on his own, and he’s realised that it’s no more a game construct than the sun, that it’s him and nothing else, but the amount of space he’s now got to get his head around is a plain old human thing.

 Or a troll thing, he guesses. A person thing.

Karkat hasn’t mentioned it, because Karkat will only ever mention things that are bothering him when the two of them are curled up on a couch and he can make himself into a little ball in Dave’s side and look at the red fabric of those goddamn pyjamas instead of anyone else. His body language is what gives it away instead; he’s smaller than he should be, folding in on himself whenever he looks up, wincing in the light like he expects the gloom of alchemised lamps instead of the sun. Space, and it actually existing in a way that isn’t the confines of a meteor or an oversized battleship or a planet you can get around in a day is apparently something everyone is struggling with.

“Pay attention, asshole,” Karkat says. Dave is jerked from yet another musing on space and light into reality, where he’s lost on Rainbow Road. Again. He feels slightly disloyal, like if there’s anything he should be wondering at endlessly it’s time instead, but mostly he just feels really fucking stupid. Jade kicking your ass at Mario Kart every time you play will have that effect on a person.

“Ha!” she crows, poking Dave in the side. “Seventeen nil.”

“Come on Harley,” Dave moans, “Just let me win once, please? I’ll come last in every other game we play ever, I promise, but you can’t trash me like this. I have a reputation to upkeep.”

“Don’t worry,” says Karkat, “I’m sure everyone in this new Earth place will still be aware of how awesomely fucking cool Dave Strider is, and just forget your countless defeats to Harley at a stupid wigglers’ game for wigglers.”

“Yeah, Dave, it’s all cool. Just like you!” Jade laughs. Dave’s forgotten how much he missed her laugh; they used to call each other whenever the time-zones aligned back in Old Earth, and no matter what happened before, or up to about two hours afterwards, Jade’s laugh could always, _always_ cheer him up.

“Yeah, right,” he grumbles, “Because there are so many non-carapace life forms on New Earth to appreciate my level of cool. So many.”

“Exactly, there’s absolutely no fucking problem. Just go and lose again, asshole.”

Dave sticks his tongue out at Karkat, because it’s a fond ‘asshole’ and Dave’s in a fond mood. Karkat rolls his eyes, but grins and sticks his tongue out back. Dave should get so many points for cracking that tough façade. It was not fucking easy.

Not that it was a thing, you know, that Dave explicitly tried to do off the bat, cracking Karkat’s façade. Just that the whole Rose-and-Kanaya and Vriska-and-Terezi things made it a little awkward to talk to either of the people he knew best on the meteor, so Dave hung around Karkat. He seemed perfectly happy to hang around himself and viewed Dave with about as much respect as the murder clown, but that was before. Now his fingers are threaded through Dave’s hair, and he’s making that strange kind of purring noise trolls do when they’re happy.

It’s nice to see Karkat being happy.

It’s nice to be happy.

“Dave, fucking pay attention,” Karkat snaps, poking him again. Dave yelps and pokes him back. Jade chooses that moment to win her fifth cup, with Dave languishing down at seventh, so he pokes her too. She nudges him, and then Karkat’s joining in, and they devolve into a giggling mass of limbs and swearing and one lone Nintendo DS being thrown out of the pile before Dave’s completely engulfed.

Someone decides to bring in tickling, and then they’re fucked, because trolls, it turns out, are _extremely_ ticklish. It seems to bring out the violence that’s actually not at all latent in their DNA, or something. Either way, Karkat’s actually getting into this now, instead of grumpily humouring Dave and Jade’s antics, and there are definitely elbows being thrown. Sharp, knobbly elbows that make it all too clear Karkat is taking this fucking seriously.

Dave can’t help but laugh. It doesn’t make being tickled and poked to death by an angry troll and one of his best friends any easier.

He thinks back to times like this on the meteor; penis Ouija, alchemising exactly five thousand bottles of apple juice and stacking them in the kitchen door, making can town with the Mayor, the short-lived movie nights he and Terezi had before she ended up with Vriska in some weird friendship-mance thing far too complicated for a human understanding of romance and it became too awkward to continue, endless shitty romcoms with Karkat. None of them were like this. There was always that slight undertone of awkwardness, of ‘So…how’s the whole universe being destroyed thing working out for you?’ or ‘Guess I’m your brother. Better ignore all those times we totally didn’t flirt with each other,’ or ‘Hey, hope dating my sister’s working out for you,’ that made everything so much harder to actually get the hang of. Endgame and what it meant for them was always looming over their shoulders like an angry crow that in Dave’s head sounded an awful lot like Vriska, and then there’d been the knowledge that they were the only ones left in their entire worlds and that it was their fault, which was not a good thing for a teenager’s psyche.

This is so much different, so much better and more wholesome. It means Dave can feel all these emotions he’s not really equipped to deal with welling up in his throat; he’s felt happiness before, his life wasn’t that shit, but he’s never felt something so all-encompassing and beautiful as this.

Later, he and Karkat go back to the house they chose. It’s small and cosy and Dave isn’t actually sure he’s completely ready to start referring to it as _their_ house yet, because that implies thinking about the future and shit like that. He’s done enough of that to last a lifetime, so now he wants to go back to a house with Karkat and shit-talk bad movies, enjoying the present. Tomorrow they’ll talk about troll and human cultures with Rose and Kanaya, and he’ll dick around with John, and maybe find Terezi and make shitty comics with her, or drag Dirk over from whatever shit he’s getting up to with the rest of the ecto-parents and chill with him. Today he’ll bask in the warmth Karkat brings. Literally. Dave’s discovered his new troll totally-not-a-boyfriend is actually really fucking hot, in both senses of the word.

He and Karkat make dinner together. It’s shitty pasta with ready-meal bolognaise, but anything tastes better non-alchemised. To Dave, it’s like ambrosia. Karkat complains about ‘stupid fucking human food and their weirdass sauces’ but then again, Karkat will complain about anything, so Dave tries not to feel all that special.

He does, though. There’s not been a single relationship Karkat’s ever had, hateful or otherwise – and Dave’s been treated to rich descriptions of all twenty of those relationships– where Karkat hasn’t spent a good portion of it insulting the other party, so that isn’t all that different. The thing is that with Dave, the insults have a certain fondness to them. They steer clear of anything expressly removed from acceptable joke territory. They’re also pretty fucking funny.

So yes, actually, Dave has a lot of reasons for feeling special just because of Karkat – and so does Karkat, because Dave’s never told anyone else half of what Karkat knows about him. This also isn’t the first time he’s realised that, and gone through all the reasons he could feel pretty darn spectacular because of it. The difference is that this time, finally, he lets himself.


End file.
